IDENTIFICATION OF AUDITORY BRAIN-STEM RESPONSES

Auditory brainstem evoked responses are routinely used in audiology an d otoneurology. An automatic method can be used to roughly classify th e responses into probably normal, probably abnormal, and uncertain cas es. Interpretation of the auditory brainstem response is a multistage process. Essential tasks are to detect individual peaks in the wavefor m and to choose representatives examples as medically interesting Jewe tt components. Our method is based on the comparison of detected peaks and normal values by means of an evaluation function, choosing repres entatives so that the values of this function will be maximized. We ha ve studied the effects of some evaluation functions on the ability to correctly classify an evoked response. It turns out that the choice of an appropriate evaluation function is crucial in some problematic cas es.